


Us, but we're...

by Teatrolley



Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Mental Health Issues, this is just. them being in love. thanks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-29 03:38:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12622332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teatrolley/pseuds/Teatrolley
Summary: “You think we do this in every universe?” he whispers, and Even looks down at him to smile.“Yeah,” he says, “I think in one of them we meet in this way,” and just like that it’s begun.Or: Even tells Isak stories





	Us, but we're...

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Us, but we're...](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12902343) by [sunny_witch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunny_witch/pseuds/sunny_witch)



> me: stop constantly writing skam fic with similar themes  
> also me: no!!
> 
> in other news look who finally managed to write something short
> 
> russian translation of this can also be found [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/6232815)

Here’s how it starts: 

It’s late. There’s a breeze outside, blowing through the flat, caressing their pleasantly tired skin. It’s a quiet Thursday evening, one of the ones that Isak likes so much he doesn’t quite know how to say it, and they’re staying in, tonight, spending the evening with each other. Quietly. 

They’re sitting on their duvet, on the floor, in front of the open balcony door. Looking at the stars. Even has a cup of tea in-between his hands, and Isak has his head on his shoulder and a finger to his thigh, drawing a pattern of love.

“You think we do this in every universe?” he whispers, and Even looks down at him to smile.

“Yeah,” he says, “I think in one of them we meet in this way,” and just like that it’s begun.

“Oh?” Isak says. “Go on?”

“Well,” Even says, and sits up a little straighter, like this is a story he’s worked on for more than the last five seconds. It dislodges Isak’s head from his shoulder, but Isak doesn’t mind, already delighted by this. “So, you’re sixteen and I’m eighteen and there’s a rooftop in town that we both go to when we need somewhere to get away. And it helps us escape the world for a little bit.”

“Sounds nice,” Isak says, quietly, and reaches up to fix the hair behind Even’s ear. 

“Hm,” Even says. “And you know stuff about the stars, probably, and sometimes all we do is lie and look at them as you tell me stories of the universe, and we feel more content than we can remember feeling in a long time.”

“Sounds _really_ nice,” Isak says, and drops his head back to Even’s shoulder, breathes out, and feels that calm that Even is talking about. Especially so when Even leans in to kiss his forehead and lifts a hand from around his cup to card it, warm and gentle, through Isak’s hair. “We fall in love like that?”

“Yeah,” Even says. “Of course we do.” And then: “We always fall in love.”

*

Isak doesn’t believe in soulmates.

He’s far too scientific for stuff like that, far too logical. He’s not a philosopher, but if he had to make a choice he’d say Jean Paul Sartre was right when he said that meaning doesn’t come pre-packaged, but has to be selected and made. 

Maybe that’s why he likes the idea that they’d be drawn to each other in every universe so much. 

He doesn’t believe in soulmates, or fate, or God. Not like his mother does, at least, but he did believe in Him once, just a little, if you can do something like that just a little, and sometimes, if he’s honest, he misses the surety of it. The permanence. He knew long before his dad left that most things aren’t really permanent after all, that actually the only thing you can be sure of is change, paradoxically enough. But it’s nice. It’s nice, sometimes, to live in a world where this, the two of them, while changing, will always stay the same in the sense that it stays.

If Isak believes in anything, anyway, he believes in them.

*

Even senses a lot of things about him, and maybe he senses that he likes the story. Probably, he does. Either way, he keeps them going, beginning them every time like they're picking up from somwhere, already begun. Like all of the stories exist as continuations.

Like in the kitchen, as they’re cooking: 

“I’m twenty-eight and you’re twenty-six and we meet on Bake-Off–” and Isak laughs at that, loud in a surprised way, punched out of him, and Even smiles in that delighted way of his, “and I think you’re just the sweetest thing, and you think I’m your biggest competition and you’re very stubborn so, at first, you find me annoying–”

“And hot,” Isak interjects. 

“And hot, sure,” Even agrees, grinning. “But then I fuck something up, one of the signature bakes, and have to start over, only I don’t have enough sugar. Only, of course–”

“I do,” Isak says.

“Exactly.”

“I see where this is going.”

“Hm,” Even says. “You give it to me, because you’re kind like that, and it’s the thing that makes me muster up the last bit of courage I need, so when the cameras stop rolling for the day I join you outside and ask you out.”

“Do I say yes?” Isak asks, and Even scoffs at him, mock-offended in the way that Isak loves.

“ _Do I say yes_ ,” Even copies. “What kind of question is that? Have you _seen_ me?”

They both laugh, now.

“You're right,” Isak says.

And then, on the way home from KB, too, after Isak’s picked Even up with a heart drawn on the window of the shop:

“So I’m twenty-one and you’re nineteen and I work at KB and it’s winter, actually, I just decided, because you’re cute when you’re bundled up. Anyway–” Even says, and they both grin. “You come in wearing mittens and a hat and a scarf, and your cheeks are red, and you ask for, uh… A chai latte, because you like that in this universe, and the minute I see you I’m struck by you. You stay in he corner of the shop, then, you know that booth over by the window, for two hours, studying. By the time you’re done I’m in love with you.”

“You’re always in love with me immediately, in these,” Isak says, and Even takes his hand. 

“Got to keep it believable,” he says, and Isak still gets so shy around him, sometimes, when he says things like this, so all he does is smile at the ground, wide and happy, and it makes Even laugh.

“So, anyway,” he goes on, “I figure that since our life is apparently a cute teen rom-com I have to go all out and use our cups to ask you out and I do, write a little _text me_ and a heart with my number on it and everything, but, embarrassingly, my co-worker leaves for her break right as your drink’s coming up, so I have to be the one to hand it to you.”

Isak laughs, loves this story, and loves him. “What do you do?” he asks.

“Keep it smooth, of course,” Even says. “You remember the towels.” Isak rolls his eyes, sighing, and Even grins. “Shut up, that was great. Anyway, in this universe I say, _so this worked out better in my head but if you do what it says on the cup right now maybe we can still save this–”_

Isak snorts.

“See,” Even says, delighted. “A bit funny. So, anyway, you laugh in this universe, too, and then you fish out your phone right there and then and send me a heart _back_ , God this story is becoming cute maybe I should steal it for a movie–”

“You should.”

“Hm. Either way, we go on a date that night, because we’re desperate for each other, and since this is a classic rom-com sort of story it probably starts raining and that’s when we kiss, to really drive the theme home.”

Isak kisses him now, under the stars, because Even is his favourite person in the whole world, and Even holds onto his jaw and smiles into it.

“So, how many stars out of five?” he asks, when they pull apart.

“Oh, five, definitely,” Isak says, but then: “Well. Four and three quarters. You made me like chai latte.”

Even laughs. Isak watches it, smiling.

*

Maybe it’s the closet, or maybe everyone feels like this, or maybe it’s that sometimes his emotions are so big he doesn’t quite know how to articulate them, but Isak is very good at speaking in code. Even is, too.

He still draws Isak little things, all of the time. The two of them kissing in bed when he has to leave early on a Sunday for work; the two of them flirting, when he wants to initiate sex in a new way, he says, _keep it fresh, you know, make sure you still see my appeal_ , and then; a different universe in which he does the laundry or, at least, the two of them do it together. 

Even cooks the things he likes and remembers to buy him beer and does his own little things on his laptop or in his sketchbook or on his phone in the bed, if he wakes up early, while Isak sleeps, so that he doesn’t have to wake up alone anymore. And Even tells him these stories, understanding, somehow, that the commitment they promise is soothing to Isak who hates that he has issues and doesn’t want to talk about them, but has to acknowledge that they’re there, anyway.

Even is stable for a long time but, eventually, late October and the anniversary of their first kiss, he has another episode. 

He hates it, Isak can tell, that it’s on the anniversary. That he’s been looking forward to this for so long, and yet… and yet, and yet, and yet. He’s told isak a bit about it, at this point, about the exhaustion and how that’s the worst part, the feeling that there’s nothing better to work towards. That it’ll always be like this.

Isak knows that it won’t help to pretend like this isn’t happening, because it is, so what he whispers, four am when Even wakes up after sleeping for fourteen hours and looks at his hands like he feels like they’re empty, what he whispers is this:

“So I’m twenty-two,” and Even exhales more than sighs, and closes his eyes, but more like he’s sad than like he wants Isak to stop, so: “And you’re twenty-four. And we meet in uni, probably, and you’re still there, and you’re still doing film, and on our fourth date you tell me that you’re bipolar and that, when you were younger, it felt like it would never end, so much so that you thought you needed to be the one to end it yourself.” 

Even swallows, and Isak reaches out to touch his hair, and he arranged the Yakuza fights when Jonas was beat up, but he’s never fought for anyone like this.

“But you smile about it,” he goes on. “A little nostalgically, almost, because, you say, it seems like such a world away now. Not because it never feels bad. But because most of the time, at least, it feels better.”

Even doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t open his eyes, but he exhales, again, and turns into Isak’s chest instead of away from him and then, when Isak cards a hand through his hair, loosens the tension in his shoulders a bit. 

It’s not much. It’s never much, when he’s like this. 

But it’s enough.

*

By the time it’s the anniversary of their first time and, in some ways of counting, them, Even’s been better again for a while. 

While he’s still sick but almost better they binge-watch Stranger Things and he kisses Isak’s temple, first time in a while, and says, “So I’m fourteen and you’re twelve,” and Isak likes this one a lot, likes imagining a world where he’s known Even even longer because, even now, young as they are, he feels a little jealous of everyone who got to know Even before he did. 

So he likes the story, and likes it a lot, but it’s not his favourite. Even asks him, night of their anniversary, “Do you have a favourite. Of the stories?” and Isak tells him that, says,

“Yeah. But you haven’t told it yet.”

“Oh?” Even says, smiling like he’s surprised. “What is it, then?”

And he’s so lovely, and so kind, and so brave, and so fascinating, and he cares for Isak in a way that’s so obvious that even Isak can tell, and he cares about everyone else, too, with an intensity like his heart’s bigger than his body. And he’s so vivid and so passionate and he makes everything better, and Isak is so, so in love with him, and Isak wouldn’t trade him for anything in the world, so:

“I’m seventeen, and you’re nineteen, and we meet in a bathroom where you steal all the towels.”

Even tilts his head, smile slow-dawning but so, so wide, and scoots in closer as he says, “How do you beat me at my own game, huh?” and kisses him.

They keep kissing, kissing and kissing and kissing, but then later, when they’re naked and everything has bled into pastel colours and their legs are tangled under the covers, he reaches out, caresses Isak’s cheek with his thumb, and smiles, in a way that’s so soft that it makes his eyes melt into honey. 

When he speaks it’s with the kind of reverence that reminds Isak that, on top of everything they are, they’re poetry, too. 

“This one,” he says. “This one is my favourite, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! talk to me in the comments?
> 
> also this intense skam focus and i, we’re really going places. maybe next thing i upload will be an au i’m working on, we’ll see


End file.
